Creature 1:7

I wake up shaking.

He wasn't real. He was just a dream.

My jaw hurts, but after a quick probing of my mouth with my finger I can feel my tooth. It's sore. I have a toothache, but it's still there.

It hadn't been crushed in my mandible after all.

The blood hadn't erupted from my mouth as the vise-grips shattered my tooth with me still attached.

The nerve hadn't been severed.

I didn't pass out from the pain.

It was just a nightmare. Standard issue for me, but intensified by the throbbing pain in my mouth.

In 3 days the dentist can see me. In 2 more days he'll remove my wisdom teeth and lance the infection that is causing the pain in my mouth.

During those five days, the abscess in my mouth grows and the pain refuses to subside.

On day four I'll go to my bar.

I'll be hopped up on a few Valium given to me by Scuba Steve and well jollied by shots of Jäger that are bought for me by people that really don't have money to be spending on Jäger.

I'll be funny.

I'll recant stories that I've embellished to a slew of laughing friends and onlookers.

I'll keep a lit Camel Wide in my mouth and only remove it when the cherry is all but extinguished.

I'll make emotional connections with people that I never, ever intend on returning.

I can run this routine all night. I'm not even really aware anyone else is near. I'm on autopilot. I'm in immense pain and the witty retorts coming from my mouth never even register on my brain.

The Gunslinger would be proud.

As autopilot runs, the puffs on my wide get longer and longer. The pain in my tooth grows distant as cool liquor fills my warm stomach. I hold my liquor well, but the mask gets loose and whereas an outsider couldn't notice my inner depressions, it becomes more apparent that my story telling is starting to taper off and others are maintaining a more prominent position in the conversation. This breaks the group of a dozen or so friends into various directions. Some of them taper off and discuss the bands they want to form. Some of them are desperately working to seduce the girls that have had a few too many. Some discuss literature. Some discuss cinema. Some discuss religion.

I discuss my pain. I discuss it with my camel wide as everyone else slowly meanders away from me in a quiet gentle fashion.

On the fourth day, I am drunk.

On the fourth day, however, one person remains.

Through my blurred vision and steady smoking I notice her easing closer and confidently looking at me for another story.

She must have been friends of a friend of a friend of mine that was earlier laughing about the time I accidentally burned my ass with an overly fresh Burger King french fry that has left a mark to this day.

She stands there friendly, but she's not a prey. She's not the girl that I take home and discard. She's not giving the impression that she wants that from me...but she definitely wants something.

So we talk.

I open my charisma and feed her. She laughs, but it's not sincere. It's friendly and it's not snobbish but it's certainly letting me know that she sees through it.

Yes. The bullshit. That “it”.

On the fourth day, this girl talks to me with an intent I'm not familiar with.

After an hour she might as well be the only person in the bar.

After 2 hours she's not laughing.

She wants something and is afraid to ask.

After 3 hours, nothing I say has any effect. She has grown beyond the urge to hear me talk. She is focused only on the question she feels she has to present to me. I see this fact pouring from her vast eyes that seem to be focused somewhere at the back of my skull. Her intensity breaks through my mask and easily navigates the haze of my drunkenness.

That fact discomforts me to an end I can't recall ever feeling.

Say it.

Just ask me.

Ask me anything and let me block you out again forever.

Maybe I can take you home then. Maybe I can get you to laugh at my funny stories. Maybe I can make you think I'm artsy and talented and different and special. Maybe I can make you not love me. Maybe I can get you away from the monster you are trying to see.

But, apparently, she has already seen it.

After 4 hours and 44 minutes she asks me to kill her.

I think I'm going to need some more Jäger.